Good things come in packages

Call me old school, but I love a nice piece of post. You know, the kind with a handwritten envelope/label. The kind that you’re not expecting and turns out to contain nice things. Like yesterday, when I opened an envelope to discover a thank-you card from some friends who’ve recently adopted a beautiful 1 year old girl – now I have her smiling face on my fridge. Joyous!

Therefore, I love a project that involves the use of Royal Mail. In the past, I’ve entered blogging contests to win books or other randomly lovely things (like the annual craft giveaway I was part of for a few years) – it makes someone feel warm and fuzzy inside and leads to you discover all sorts of wonderful bloggers. Thus, when a friend mentioned on Facebook that she was signing up for Oh Comely Magazine’s November care package, I thought this was something I should find out about…

The premise was simple: sign up online by a certain date, providing your postal details & anything you thought might be useful to a person who might be creating a box of goodies for you; await an email giving you the details of the person to whom you’d be sending nice things; prepare your box & get it in the post by November 18th; and await the arrival of your own parcel.

The guidance was simple too:

Something personal. Eg: a favourite family recipe, a good book you’ve just finished, a playlist of your favourite music. An inspiring snippet. Eg: newspaper clipping, a photo or illustration you love, the lyrics to a song that strike home. A wintry treat. Eg: a pair of gloves, your favourite tea, a mini hot-water bottle. The spending guide for each box is £10.

Simple, lovely and genius!

So, I duly signed up and got my package together. Being the idiot that I am, I forgot to take photos of it, but it contained the following:Christmas Tea (That’s a winter essential in my world) Giant Buttons (Why not? And they’re perfect for dipping in the tea.) Hand-made Christmas tree decorations. (Made by me, so I guess that’s personal!) A recipe for my brownies & our family scone recipe. (Written on the back of some inspiring views on postcards.) Cold-kit (A Ugandan purse with Cath Kidston tissues & a lip-balm.)

Nice, no? I mean the Giant Buttons would be a winner for me alone! Oh, and there were labels (courtesy of bargain shelf Target finds while in California), so everything looked nice – which is always important.

Today, I’d just got home from a busy morning when the post man rang the bell – apparently he’d got a large box for me. Although I was expecting an eBay parcel (that would be book 3 of a 3 book EBD purchase I made last week), I had a feeling this would be my care package – I was not wrong. Here are its contents, not particularly artistically arranged on the table:

It’s really very lovely! Obviously, there are gloves & Buttons (great minds think alike!), plus a nice artistic postcard, on the reverse of which is an explanation for what some of the items are. The novel is one she’d just finished, but had enjoyed and the memory stick contains some tunes which I haven’t listened to yet – but I’m looking forward to. In the middle is the most genius inclusion: a mini bottle of Sangria plus some cinnamon sticks – a DIY mulled wine kit! Love it! Thank you so much Daisy and I hope you’re enjoying your parcel too!

What’s even better is that thanks to the #OCswapbox hashtag, you can follow people as they send off and receive their parcels. It’s a veritable world of loveliness and generosity!

Incidentally, it’s worth checking out the Oh Comely blog – their most recent post is about their culinary adventure with chocolate teacakes, which are categorically top of my ‘next thing to bake that will be a challenge’ list. I knew I liked them…